


lover, please stay

by Freezer7



Category: Greenwarden (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Behavior, Drabble, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV Bautista, POV Second Person, bautistas gender is technically ambigous in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26182168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freezer7/pseuds/Freezer7
Summary: You can't fix someone just by loving them.
Relationships: Bautista/Male Tracker, Marc Bautista/Tracker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	lover, please stay

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings for implied suicidal idealization, brief references to cancer, and brief mentions of disordered eating.

It's a different kind of pain, watching the man you love struggle. It had been a stupid notion, that somehow just by the force of your love you could patch the holes in his soul, the gaping, weeping wounds in his psyche.

  
He shares the bed, but still wakes up screaming more nights than not.

  
He doesn't sleep with the knife underneath the pillow anymore, but only after it has been pressed to your throat.

  
It hurts, to watch him hurt.

  
You make breakfast, when you have access to a kitchen, but he doesn't eat.

  
You prepare the room for you to sleep at night, but he still triple checks over every detail.

  
You don't talk about, and that's the worst of it.

  
He wrenches, screaming, from your arms, and says nothing before getting up to shower. Smiles blandly over the breakfast he barely touches. His laugh is rare, and you don't think it should make you want to weep. He sleeps through the night even more rarely, more often refuses to sleep at all. You don't have the words to talk with him. You can only be there on the bad days, be there on the better days (there are no true good days).

  
His eyes are black with the bruises, and there are no blows or fists for you to stop.

  
You had an aunt die of cancer as a kid, and you think this is the same. Wasting away, something unseen eating away until there's nothing left, just the faint smell of cigarette smoke lingering on. Alive, but not _living_.

  
He gets hurt more than he should, you know.

  
He is reckless, shrugs off bruises and broken bones and blood.

  
You are losing him, and it's a slow, creeping, crawling thing.

  
You dream, sometimes. Dreams that make tears run harder than twisted and mangled bodies and nightmares. Lewis is there when you wake, is always there for you after hard dreams. You don't tell him that the dreams that make you wake sobbing and gasping aren't the nightmares, but something softer.

  
You dream, sometimes, and you dream of quiet mornings spent curled around him.

  
Every drive to a new job feels like a funeral procession.

  
You are clinging to a man's life, one that he doesn't cling to himself.

  
He loves you, and it's not enough.

  
Some nightmares he wakes from, and he clings to you, sobs into your chest, fists his hands into your shirt. He repeats the words like a mantra, like a curse. _I love you, I love you, I love you._

  
He smokes, and you hate him for it. So, so, _so_ many ways to die.

  
You tell him, tell him again, plead for him to quit. _One less way to die._

  
He promises to quit, but you can still taste the smoke on his lips.

  
He is smoke, and you can't pin him to you, you can only watch as he fades.

**Author's Note:**

> I say I want Lewis to have a happy ending, but then I go and write stuff like this... Comments are my life blood! XD


End file.
